Congratulations on Finding Dinner!

Due to some statute of limitations issues related to some totally non-violent prior offenses you live in Yellow Knife, Canada, far, far away from Federal Marshals and people in general.

For about a quarter of the year life isn’t so bad. Mosquitoes are everywhere and constant daylight all but promises madness, but sometimes you get a swim in and you get to grow a sweet beard and not take shit from anyone about it.

But for the other three quarters of the time you barely eke out a living, assailed by the elements, local wildlife and the occasional smuggler trying to bring in weapons grade nuclear materials. The elements are, naturally enough, the biggest threat of the three.

Yes, we’re quite proud of that pun.

The first few years it was rough for you. As a programmer you really didn’t have much physical prowess or any knowledge of survival skills. All you really brought along for the ride was your sweet, sweet beard.

But with time and effort you quickly became a part of the wild, and for the last year and a half or so you’ve been doing fairly well for yourself.

But it turns out that Al Gore movie wasn’t bullshit at all, and life has been getting harder and harder as food becomes more and more scarce in your area. Sure, the summer is slightly longer, but weather patterns on both ends of the seasonal spectrum are becoming increasingly harsh with leads to erratic animal behavior and unreliable food sources.

That means despite all your experience surviving in the wilds this year is going to be the hardest you’ve ever had.

Tomorrow night you’ll be out in the woods tracking caribou with your homemade bow and arrow. They’ll be a ways ahead of you and moving steadily away, but necessity will guide your steady strides. You’ll be inching closer and closer to the herd and eventually you’ll be able to all but smell them just ahead of you.

You’ll move into a clearing where they’ll be gathered, milling around a large object you won’t recognize at first. You’ll be so transfixed on the herd, the bow in your hand, your eyes on a fatted bull caribou.

All you’ll be able to see are the little slats of his ribs, covered with muscle. You’ll start breathing in pattern with him, inhale, exhale, draw, then release. You won’t realize what they were staring at until the herd has scattered around the large, kicking male as he breathes his last, blinking in agony as his heart fails him.

That’s when you’ll see what they were gathered around: a refrigerator. You’ll have no idea what it’s doing in the middle of the woods and from what you’ve gathered it wasn’t plugged in to anything.

You’ll creep up to confirm your kill and, while you’re there, you’ll open the door cautiously. After all, it’s a fridge in the middle of the woods. Who knows what could be in there. It could be full of raccoons, for god’s sake (filthy woodland bandits) and then you’d be involved in exactly the sort of hyjinx you came up here to avoid.

But when the door opens you’ll see that it’s simply filled with frozen dinner after frozen dinner. The entire thing will be stuffed full of them. There’ll be enough to feed you for a year. Or there would be, if you had a microwave.

You’ll laugh a hearty chuckle from the font of your recently acquired woodsiness as you heft the caribou carcass over your shoulder and turn from the fridge. You would’ve liked it to have something more useful, maybe some beer, but ah well.

You’ll formulate a plan to drag it back to your house and find a way to rig up some solar paneling and order a microwave from Best Buy’s website, but your plans will take a back seat to the irony of all that wasted food sitting inexplicably just below the arctic circle.

Life truly is full of mysteries, you’ll think, as you walk past the plane crash a few feet away, completely oblivious to the wreckage as you haul home your kill, excited to make jerky.

Ah well. Congratulations on finding dinner. If you do end up getting solar paneling installed we recommend that you get a coffee machine too. It might help you be a little less oblivious during these long winter months.